Moll Flanders Read Free Page B

went very neat, for if I had rags on, I would always be clean or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me and would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money; and this made them give me more, till at last I was indeed called upon by the magistrates to go out to service. But then I was become so good a workwoman myself, and the ladies were so kind to me, that I was past it; for I could earn as much for my nurse as was enough to keep me; so she told them that if they would give her leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her assistant and teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for I was very nimble at my work though I was yet very young.
    But the kindness of the ladies did not end here, for when they understood that I was no more maintained by the town as before, they gave me money oftener; and as I grew up they brought me work to do for them, such as linen to make, laces to mend, and heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing them but even taught me how to do them; so that I was a gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word; for before I was twelve years old, I not only found myself clothes and paid my nurse for my keeping but got money in my pocket too.
    The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their children’s; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one thing, some another; and these my old woman managed for me like a mother and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them and turn them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.
    At last one of the ladies took such a fancy to me that she would have me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters.
    Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my good woman said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. “Well,” says the lady, “that’s true; I’ll only take her home for a week, then, that I may see how my daughters and she agree and how I like her temper, and then I’ll tell you more; and in the meantime, if anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them you have sent her out to my house.”
    This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady’s house; but I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were as unwilling to part with me.
    However, I did come away and live almost a year more with my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady’s house that I was not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought that it was fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and therefore I longed to be there again.
    When I was about fourteen years and a quarter old, my good old nurse—mother, I ought to call her—fell sick and died. I was then in a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end to a poor body’s family when once they are carried to the grave, so the poor good woman being buried, the parish children were immediately removed by the churchwardens; the school was at an end, and the day-children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till they were sent somewhere else. As for what she left, a daughter, a married woman, came and swept it all away, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to jest with me and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for herself if she pleased.
    I was frighted out of my wits almost and knew not what to do; for I was, as it were, turned out-of-doors to the wide world, and that